Like the last “moderate” anti-immigrant group the Republican Party championed, Youth for Western Culture, the leadership of the “Minutemen” have been arrested for serious violent crimes against minorities. This time, it’s multiple murder. This is what “respectable” racism looks like.

Two of three people arrested in a southern Arizona home invasion that left a little girl and her father dead had connections to a Washington state anti-illegal immigration group that conducts border watch activities in Arizona.

Jason Eugene Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, have been charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and other charges, said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz.

The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their 9-year-old daughter.

Their motive was financial, Dupnik said.

“The husband who was murdered has a history of being involved in narcotics and there was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location as well as the possibility of drugs,” Dupnik said.

Forde is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a small border watch group, and Bush goes by the nickname “Gunny” and is its operations director, according to the group’s Web site.

She is from Everett, Wash., has recently been living in Arizona and was once associated with the better known and larger Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

A statement attributed to officers of Forde’s group and posted on its Web site on Saturday extended condolences to the victims’ families and said the group doesn’t condone such acts and will cooperate with law enforcement.

“This is not what Minutemen do,” said member Chuck Stonex, who responded to an e-mail from The Associated Press sent through the Web site. “Minutemen observe, document and report. This is nothing more than a cold-hearted criminal act, and that is all we want to say.”

The assailants planned to leave no one alive, Dupnik said at a press conference in Tucson on Friday. He said Forde was the ringleader.

“This was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses,” Dupnik said. “To just kill a 9-year-old girl because she might be a potential witness to me is just one of the most despicable acts that I have heard of.”

Dupnik said Forde continued working through Friday to raise a large amount of money to make her anti-illegal immigrant operation more sophisticated.

Forde denied involvement as she was led from sheriff’s headquarters.

“No, I did not do it,” she said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Gaxiola also denied involvement; Bush was arrested at a Kingman, Ariz., hospital where he was being treated for a leg wound he allegedly received when the woman who survived the attack managed to get a gun and fire back.

Killed were 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her 29-year-old father, Raul Junior Flores. The name of the wounded woman who survived the attack hasn’t been released.

Forde is well known in the anti-illegal immigration community, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

“She’s someone who even within the anti-immigration movement has been labeled as unstable,” Levin said. “She was basically forced out of another anti-immigrant group, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and then founded her own organization.”

Stonex, of Alamagordo, N.M., said he met Forde while on an Arizona border watch operation last fall, and liked her despite her reputation in the Minutemen community.

“I know she’s always had sort of a checkered past but I take people for what I see and not what I hear,” the 57-year-old said.

She recruited him to start a new chapter in New Mexico, but was secretive about her group or its members.

Stonex said he didn’t know how to recruit for a chapter and never did.

He said Forde called him on the day of the attack while he was visiting Arizona and asked him to bring bandages to an Arivaca home because Bush had been wounded.

Stonex said it appeared Bush had a relatively minor gunshot wound, which he treated.

He said Forde and Bush told him Bush been wounded by a smuggler who shot at him while the group were patrolling the desert.

Stonex said he didn’t suspect that might not be the case until was contacted by a deputy on Saturday about their alleged involvement in the crime.

Arizona, by the way does very bad things to people convicted on multiple murder raps.

A Melbourne academic says shutting down Facebook hate groups is not the way to combat “rising levels of intolerance” in Australia.

After recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, one Facebook group – which says Australia is “full” and urges immigrants to “learn the language” or enjoy their “right to leave” – has attracted nearly 64,500 members.

One poster calls on Australians to stand against “curry munching idiots”, saying the attacks on the students may have been “frustration driven, due to their foolish traits and culture”.

“We request you to please unite and stand against the recent protests by Indians … drive all the immigrants out and make Australia clean,” he said.

“We have our unique Aussie culture, we drink beer, we eat meat, pork and beef. If you can’t bear with that, please leave.”

Deakin University Associate Professor Dr Rohan Bastin says Australia has a strong sentiment of ‘assimilationism’, where immigrants are expected to become part of a ‘mainstream Australia’.

“If people are saying ‘if you don’t like it, leave’, then they’re demonstrating that they’re profoundly stupid,” he said.

“You’re not being racist, but you are being essentialist, homogenising and therefore completely intolerant.”

Dr Bastin says the fact a Facebook group, like this one, could attract so many members is depressing, but not surprising.

“The previous federal government under John Howard really promoted those issues,” he said.

“I don’t think that they managed to marginalise Pauline Hanson and her ‘mainstream Australia’ views so much as to incorporate them – she disappeared politically as the ideas were taken on board.

“It [this group] reflects the fact that intolerance is really on the rise.”

But he says Facebook should not be targeted and that closing down such groups is not the answer.

“It’s much better for people to get the opportunity to put their thoughts out there,” he said.

“Things like this Facebook group have got their roots very much in contemporary culture and you see these kinds of intolerance and assimilationism in much more ordinary things.

“It’s uncouth, it’s young people spilling their minds.

“People think that we’d better stop it because it’s going to create violence, well hang on, it’s coming from somewhere and it’s largely coming from ignorance.

“We have a responsibility to combat that.”

A spokeswoman from Facebook says the social networking site wants to be a place where people can openly discuss issues and express their views.

She admits Facebook sometimes find people discussing and posting about topics that others may find “controversial, inaccurate or even offensive”, but says there is no place for “racism or any form of hate speech”.

AN Australian website urging a “hate offensive” against Indians was condemned as “disgusting”, while fears grow that racial tensions will escalate.

For the past six months, Melbourne man Patrick O’Sullivan has posted comments onto a white supremacy forum about how “evil” Indians were and urged others to participate in a “Summer hate offensive” in the Victorian city.

In a post just before Christmas, he asked for people to call him if they wanted to participate.

“For those of you in or nearby Melbourne, contact me. This summer a lot of Race Hate is occurring! RAHOWA!”

Senior police and Indian students deplored the web comments but police said they doubted they had caused a spate of assaults on Indian students, despite members of the forum pledging to join in the “offensive”.

Mr O’Sullivan, who was jailed in 2002 for stabbing a man who accused him of not being a Nazi due to his Irish blood, told news.com.au that the posts were not intended to incite violence and that he was now a peaceful man.

He said his rallying call for a “Summer hate offensive” was a peaceful way to recruit people into the Creativity Movement, whose website describes itself as a “Progressive Pro-White Religion”.

In late November, Mr O’Sullivan posted a comment – using the name “RAWHOWA NOW” – on a neo-Nazi forum which said he was sick of “Dirty F**king Indians”.

“They infest the Melbourne area. I could write all day (about) how evil and putrid those scum are… one particularly infuriating thing about these curry n*ggers is their arrogance,” he said.

“I think this may seem (to have originated) from the apathy of Whites not putting tem (sic) in their place. Those browm (sic) maggots used to get spat on, tolchocked and on occasion even stabbed and/or hospitalised.

“I’m not saying to commit illegal acts, violence etc. This is merely and observation of mine.”

Amit Menghani, president of the Federation of Indian Students in Australia, said he thinks the comments were promoting “curry-bashing”.

The term “curry-bashing” is used to describe the hunting down of Indians and beating them.

“This kind of provocation must stop,” Mr Menghani said.

“It’s absolutely disgusting.”

Victorian Police commander Trevor Carter, whose beat covers Melbourne’s west, said that although the comments were “appalling”, the attacks on students were not believed to be racially motivated.

“There is an element of (racism), but the purpose is to steal property from people,” Mr Carter said.

Meanwhile The Australian reports that Indians in Australia are concerned an increasingly “hysterical” reaction in India and among local protestors to assaults and robberies on foreign students could create a backlash against their community.

Raj Natarajan, the outgoing president of the United Indian Associations of New South Wales, said his organisation was concerned about the “flow-on effect” for Australians of Indian background.

“I am proud to look like an Indian,” he said.

“I don’t want to look any other way. But I and my family are Australian citizens, and we are also proud of Australian society. It is tolerant, multicultural and friendly.

“These attacks are a worrying trend, but I don’t believe they are racially motivated.

“Indian kids who live here are not complaining. They’re perfectly happy. They have lots of friends in the broader Australian community, and many are married to Aussies.”

On Sunday, Indian students blocked city streets in protest of a wave of up to 70 violent attacks against them in the past year but the protest itself turned into clashes with police.

Mr Natarajan sought to distance the broader Indian community from the rally, saying it was organised by visiting foreign students.